For
many people the thought of paying out for insurance is unnecessary.
This situation will never happen to me is very common. Certain
types of insurance are compulsory regardless – car insurance,
business insurance etc, but many people just think it is
a “waste of money” to buy insurance for their freezer, TV,
health, legal costs on rental property or vacation, this
will never happen to me. Sure you can be lucky and dine
out a few times on what you could have paid out, but what
happens when a disaster strikes?

A
few years ago my family was going to take a late summer
holiday with my late father in law who lived in Dublin,
Ireland going to join him in the Algarve in Portugal. We
had booked this through a package company and naturally
they encouraged you to purchase Travel Insurance. 24 hours
before the trip we received a call from Ireland to say that
he had been taken into hospital. The holiday had to be immediately
cancelled and the warm weather clothing unpacked and appropriate
clothing for Ireland packed instead. The Travel Insurance
at least covered the cost of the lost Portuguese holiday
and we were able to take this with him in the
early
summer the following year.

Some
time later we were off on a summer holiday to Ireland, this
was in the early era of low cost budget airlines in the
UK and we set off for London Luton airport in what we thought
would be plenty of time. Normally there would have been
plenty of time as this is a journey we had done on numerous
occasions. On this particular Sunday Luton was holding its
Half marathon and trying to get anywhere need the airport
from the Dunstable side was near impossible. We just sat
in traffic and eventually arrived at the airport..too late!
The flight had gone and the next one that day was fully
booked. We were able to book on a flight for the next morning
(naturally at an additional charge) and had to go back home
again for 24 hours. Fortunately, although we lost a day’s
holiday, we were only staying with relatives and did not
lose out too much. No we had not taken out Travel Insurance.

In
2001 we decided to spend Christmas in the sunny South of
France. When it was not raining it was sunny and very pleasant.
We set off to return home via Nice airport and discovered
all the flights to the south of
England were cancelled. It was
covered in a blanket of snow. We spent the entire day at
the airport waiting for news. The flights going into London
Heathrow were eventually going out as they had cleared the
runway, but our flight for London Luton was not even at
the airport, as it had never left its destination that morning.
Luton never opened that day and we could not even get booked
on a flight for the following day as we had gone low cost
and the earliest flight was the day after.

We
had to hire a car again and stay on for two more nights.
We eventually arrived back to a London Luton (and that was
still touch and go as only the runway and approach roads
did not have snow on them) and got safely home. This time
we had Travel insurance – an annual policy and this kicked
in and covered some of our additional costs.

It
is most important that you do have travel insurance – you
never know when you might need it, particularly if you are
making your own booking arrangements. Most travel companies
insist that you take out a policy, however if you are booking
a weekend away, or going self catering booking the accommodation
and travel yourself, you might forget or just think it is
a waste of money. On a recent visit to Amsterdam, The Netherlands
the holiday we booked into on line stated (and as I also
saw with some other Dutch hotels) that a “non refundable”
deposit would have to be made at the time of booking. If
for example the booking had been made three months in advance
and you change your travel plans – well there goes the deposit
you paid!

Philip
Suter is a Director of JML Property Serviceshttp://www.jml-property-insurance.co.uka UK basedcompanyoffering Insurance products on
line and a holiday home advertising service and management
training with in the uk. He is a very experienced property
consultant with over 30 years work in the Residential letting
business and served in the national council of ARLA. He
is a Fellow of the National Association of Estate Agents
(NAEA) and a Member of The association of Residential Letting
Agents (ARLA)